We grew up, invested in LinguaLeo and received an award!
In fact, all the events that will be discussed below have already appeared in the news and were discussed in some form on Habré. However, we still decided to sum up some of the work of Runa Capital in June. The month was unusually saturated. Let's start in chronological order.
The most important event occurred in early June - the size of the fund increased from $ 75 million to $ 135 million. This happened at the initiative of our partners - the founders and owners of international technology businesses.
What will it change? The size of the investment and the stage of development of the companies in which we invest. At the time of the creation of Runa Capital, we planned to invest up to $ 5 million and only in startups at the seed and early stages. Now our bar has grown to $ 10 million, and we will also be able to finance projects at the growth stage and later, and we will invest more and more serious amounts in Internet projects (the previous investments of the fund were mainly in software developers). Nevertheless, now with an increase in the size of the fund, resources have also appeared to actually incubate Internet projects at a very early stage, investing in them from $ 100,000 to $ 1 million. So, if you have an idea for a web project and small team waiting for her business plan at businessplan@runacap.com
')
The model of the fund, meanwhile, will remain the same. We intend to continue investing in start-ups not only money, but also our expertise, experience in creating global companies, communications, and hundreds of hours of fund partners time and specialists from companies founded by them and friendly companies.
The second event - investing $ 3 million in LinguaLeo - the most popular web service in the CIS countries for learning English. Already, his audience has 1.5 million people. The potential of a startup is enormous: in 2011, the global market for online English language training amounted to $ 1.31 billion, and it increases every year.
Our main goal is to make LinguaLeo a global market leader. Yes, she is extremely ambitious, but to achieve it is quite realistic.
Why do we believe in service? First, tens of thousands of stories of successful examples of LinguaLeo users testify to the correct choice of language teaching methods. LinguaLeo allows you to study English words and phrases in the context of multimedia materials, take interactive training and quests to consolidate, learn thematic courses, watching the progress of learning in real time.
LinguaLeo will allow you to find a common language with anyone :)
Secondly, a strong market position. Two global competitors of the Russian service - Busuu and LiveMocha. Their daily audience is comparable to that of LinguaLeo (over 80 thousand unique users). The weekly increase — 50 thousand users — exceeds the indicators of a competitor.
Thirdly, clear monetization and development plan. It is based on the freemium (free + premium) business model: you can learn a language for free, but in order to speed up the process and make it more efficient, you can buy additional options.
$ 3 million will be spent on expanding the capabilities of the service, adding new languages, as well as its localization in other countries. Until the end of the year, the LinguaLeo team plans to launch a product in Brazil and three other countries with high demand for learning English (Mexico, Spain and Germany), develop mobile applications for Android and iPad (applications for iPhone and WinPhone are already working). In addition, the company is preparing to release an interactive course to prepare Russian schoolchildren for the Unified State Exam in English.
The investment portfolio of Runa Capital now includes 12 companies from Russia, the USA, the UK, France and Ukraine. Plans - to finance 40 - 50 technology startups.
And the last, extremely pleasant event for us - co-founder and managing partner of Runa Capital, founder of Parallels Sergey Belousov was named the merchant of the year according to the newspaper Commentesant. The best were chosen in five nominations. Sergey beat competitors in two - “Innovations” and “Internet Choice”.
Director of the Kurchatov Institute, Mikhail Kovalchuk (left) and Sergey Belousov at the Kommersant of the Year award ceremony
In the first nomination, Sergey Belousov and the Parallels Research team were noted for creating Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure - the first software market to compete with Amazon.
In the second, Runa Capital won a clear advantage over 12 candidates, including Natalia Kasperskaya from Infowatch, Ruben Vardanyan, who merged Troika Dialog and Sberbank and David Yakobashvili, who united Wimm-Bill-Dann and PepsiCo. More than half of all Internet voting participants have progressed for him.
Obviously, interest in cloud computing and information technology in Russia today is at a fairly high level.
Russian venture is not for cowards,
With the computer can not cope moron
No wonder Shakespeare loves Belousov,
Shakespeare would love him too.
Shakespeare would sing in a pretentious sonnet,
British ladies pleasing the ear
How much he excelled on the Internet
and in the development of cloud services.
And Hamlet would have gained a lot of advantages.
When I behaved like Belousov,
Such poems were dedicated by citizen-poet Dmitry Bykov to citizen-innovation Sergey Belousov.
The most important event occurred in early June - the size of the fund increased from $ 75 million to $ 135 million. This happened at the initiative of our partners - the founders and owners of international technology businesses.
What will it change? The size of the investment and the stage of development of the companies in which we invest. At the time of the creation of Runa Capital, we planned to invest up to $ 5 million and only in startups at the seed and early stages. Now our bar has grown to $ 10 million, and we will also be able to finance projects at the growth stage and later, and we will invest more and more serious amounts in Internet projects (the previous investments of the fund were mainly in software developers). Nevertheless, now with an increase in the size of the fund, resources have also appeared to actually incubate Internet projects at a very early stage, investing in them from $ 100,000 to $ 1 million. So, if you have an idea for a web project and small team waiting for her business plan at businessplan@runacap.com
')
The model of the fund, meanwhile, will remain the same. We intend to continue investing in start-ups not only money, but also our expertise, experience in creating global companies, communications, and hundreds of hours of fund partners time and specialists from companies founded by them and friendly companies.
The second event - investing $ 3 million in LinguaLeo - the most popular web service in the CIS countries for learning English. Already, his audience has 1.5 million people. The potential of a startup is enormous: in 2011, the global market for online English language training amounted to $ 1.31 billion, and it increases every year.
Our main goal is to make LinguaLeo a global market leader. Yes, she is extremely ambitious, but to achieve it is quite realistic.
Why do we believe in service? First, tens of thousands of stories of successful examples of LinguaLeo users testify to the correct choice of language teaching methods. LinguaLeo allows you to study English words and phrases in the context of multimedia materials, take interactive training and quests to consolidate, learn thematic courses, watching the progress of learning in real time.
LinguaLeo will allow you to find a common language with anyone :)
Secondly, a strong market position. Two global competitors of the Russian service - Busuu and LiveMocha. Their daily audience is comparable to that of LinguaLeo (over 80 thousand unique users). The weekly increase — 50 thousand users — exceeds the indicators of a competitor.
Thirdly, clear monetization and development plan. It is based on the freemium (free + premium) business model: you can learn a language for free, but in order to speed up the process and make it more efficient, you can buy additional options.
$ 3 million will be spent on expanding the capabilities of the service, adding new languages, as well as its localization in other countries. Until the end of the year, the LinguaLeo team plans to launch a product in Brazil and three other countries with high demand for learning English (Mexico, Spain and Germany), develop mobile applications for Android and iPad (applications for iPhone and WinPhone are already working). In addition, the company is preparing to release an interactive course to prepare Russian schoolchildren for the Unified State Exam in English.
The investment portfolio of Runa Capital now includes 12 companies from Russia, the USA, the UK, France and Ukraine. Plans - to finance 40 - 50 technology startups.
And the last, extremely pleasant event for us - co-founder and managing partner of Runa Capital, founder of Parallels Sergey Belousov was named the merchant of the year according to the newspaper Commentesant. The best were chosen in five nominations. Sergey beat competitors in two - “Innovations” and “Internet Choice”.
Director of the Kurchatov Institute, Mikhail Kovalchuk (left) and Sergey Belousov at the Kommersant of the Year award ceremony
In the first nomination, Sergey Belousov and the Parallels Research team were noted for creating Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure - the first software market to compete with Amazon.
In the second, Runa Capital won a clear advantage over 12 candidates, including Natalia Kasperskaya from Infowatch, Ruben Vardanyan, who merged Troika Dialog and Sberbank and David Yakobashvili, who united Wimm-Bill-Dann and PepsiCo. More than half of all Internet voting participants have progressed for him.
Obviously, interest in cloud computing and information technology in Russia today is at a fairly high level.
Russian venture is not for cowards,
With the computer can not cope moron
No wonder Shakespeare loves Belousov,
Shakespeare would love him too.
Shakespeare would sing in a pretentious sonnet,
British ladies pleasing the ear
How much he excelled on the Internet
and in the development of cloud services.
And Hamlet would have gained a lot of advantages.
When I behaved like Belousov,
Such poems were dedicated by citizen-poet Dmitry Bykov to citizen-innovation Sergey Belousov.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/146958/
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